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Like most kids who are 10-years old I would come home from school and watch TV. It was plugged into the wall in the back room of our house, appropriately called the “TV room”. I would sit down and watch for a while, but I was at the mercy of what was broadcast by the local stations. This was 1979 and cable was still a few years away, as I had not been implored by The Police or Pat Benatar to assemble and march on the cable company demanding, “I Want my MTV!!”. That would happen shortly thereafter, but I digress.

Anyway, fast forward 30 years and I’m driving home from my 10-year-old’s after school activity. In the backseat, he has slyly pick-pocketed my smartphone from me and is now watching “The Addams Family” on it. During the opening credits we sing the song together, snapping our fingers in-time at just the right moment.

They’re creepy and they’re kooky,Mysterious and spooky,They’re all together ooky,The Addams Family.

Since I’m literally singing along I can picture myself in that TV room at my parents house watching Mortitia, Gomez and Cousin Itt . Then it hits me — if someone had told me back then that my kid would one day be watching the Addam’s Family, on-demand, in high-definition (and what the heck is that even?) on a phone, I could not have even begun to understand how that could work. Watch TV on a PHONE? IN a car? Where would the cables be? How could a picture tube be attached to a phone? Would you still spin the phone’s rotary wheel — is that how you picked the TV channel, by dialing it? Would there be rabbit ears on the phone? How heavy would that contraption be?! There aren’t plugs or phone jacks in a car… What?!

I laughed at my “historical self” and the disbelief “I” was in. It was easy to laugh since I’ve lived through the last 30 years of technological advances. I’ve seen this stuff slowly change. Of course now there are no TV rooms needed, even if they are still there — for the moment. It makes me wonder though, will my son’s son watch the Addams Family on nano-matter suspended in the air, or in 3D holograms, or simply in his mind? How will advertising work? Will you be able to interact with the characters on the show or the products in the ads? Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be amazing — and today’s smartphones will look just as ridiculous as a ‘Ma Bell’ rotary telephone looks to us now.